Battle of Krasnik

The Battle of Krasnik was fought from 23 to 25 August 1914 during the Eastern Front campaign of World War I. The Austro-Hungarian First Army defeated the Russian Fourth Army in Austria-Hungary's first victory of the war.

Background
In early September, following their victory at the Battle of Cer, Serbian forces advanced into Bosnia. By then, the Serbian front was a sideshow, dwarfed by the clash of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies in Poland and Galicia. This was warfare conducted across wide plains where armies could maneuver freely, inhibited only by the obstacle of major rivers. Both sides used large bodies of cavalry to spearhead their movements.

Operations proceeded in a fog of confusion, with commanders ill-informed of the scale and position of enemy forces. Conrad von Hotzendorf opened with an advance northward from Galicia into Congress Poland, as demanded by his German allies. Barely across the border, Austro-Hungarian forces unexpectedly met Russian armies headed southward. Put into the field before mobilization was complete, the Russians had arrived more quickly than Conrad had anticipated. In the last week of August, the Austro-Hungarian forces - which included formations of ethnic Poles eager to liberate their people from Russian oppression - encountered the Russians at Krasnik.

Battle
The Austro-Hungarians enjoyed numerical and positional superiority, and General Mikhail Alekseyev attempted to reposition the Russian armies so that they would stand a fighting chance. However, the ensuing battle - marked by fluid troop movements and several cavalry clashes - saw the Russians be defeated by their Austro-Hungarian rivals in the Austro-Hungarians' first victory of the war.